What Would Jefferson Do? How Limited Government Got Turned Upside Down

In: Dissent: a journal devoted to radical ideas and the values of socialism and democracy, Band 55, Heft 3, S. 59-66

Abstract

Critiques the New Right's "Jeffersonian" conceptualization of limited government as not reflective of the founders' intent. The founders' laissez-faire thinking & notion of limited government are reviewed, suggesting that they were in fact not against government innovation & expansion to protect freedom & that limited government ought to be a tool for the development of an egalitarian society & prevention of economic tyranny. It is argued that the New Right movement is a betrayal of Jeffersonian ideals with the attack on government accompanied by record economic inequality & wealth concentration. Attention is given to the retreat from laissez-faire as it became clear in the 19th century that limited government was insufficient to prevent the resurgence of aristocracy in the US; the revival of laissez-faire in a form decoupled from egalitarianism & linked to positivistic concepts of economic inequality; the New Deal challenge to elite laissez-faire; the emergence of the new laissez-faire under the auspices of the New Right; & what the original laissez-faire thinkers would make of its current iteration, which is anathema to the welfare state. It is concluded that the welfare state does not run counter to Jeffersonian principles & in fact, proponents of the current understanding of limited government support an antiegalitarian doctrine of elite self-defense. Adapted from the source document.